Julia Sweeney Interview

Julia Sweeney, the SNL alumnus who created the unforgettably androgynous character, Pat, is here in the wake of “Letting Go of God” her brilliant work about losing her religion as a result of a life-threatening illness. She’s a terrific guest, and the time flies.

Comments

Dear Roseanne,
I loved your comment or subtle sarcasm, about spending all day talking to angels
and losing weight. I think this progressed into the power of positive
thinking and the opposite. I have often thought of writing a book
called the “Power of Negative Thinking.” But there is nothing original
here. What is the dialectic. There is definitely negative thinking
in the dialectic and the dialectic goes back to Plato and the Socratic
Dialogues. The dialectic has stood the test of time and it seems
it is a better way of getting at the truth then just focusing on the
positive. In the end the truth would seem to be the real positive,
even if it means we learn our government is corrupt, or whatever
truth we learn that is real.
I think we can better understand your feelings about a spiritual
or transcendental experience when you were three versus Julia Sweeney’s
experience that spiritual things are a trick in the brain;
if we understand few different things.
Nietzsche said, “Man wants certainty so badly, that he will accept a certain
nothing as opposed to an uncertain something.” The Russians were the first
to talk about nihilism, Turgenev’s hero (1862) was a nihilist. Hemingway and then
later John Barth both thought that they discovered nihilism. Of course one might
say that atheism is different, but if there is no God then any type of meaning
one gives to life, becomes much more difficult to prove or substantiate.
Whatever, Nietzsche is saying that once one does not believe in God, then
he wants certainty so badly that one will assert that there is no God.
The truth is that from a logical and scientific point of view we do not
know. Kant was a very religious man and yet in his famous antinomies
he showed that if one says there must be a God that created everything
then who or what created God. This is from the law of cause and effect.
But if one says that there was not a beginning that the universe has
always been here, then that violates the law of cause and effect as
well as first cause that does not need any cause. The question
of God is logically impossible to understand.
So Atheism is really just the flip side of God. An Atheist is sure
he or she has the answer, just like the religious zealot. I do not really
like the nervous agnostic’s position either, as it is somewhat cowardly
or smells of milk toast. Another way to look at it is that man can do calculus
but a chimpanzee so far has not been taught calculus and maybe the chimpanzee’s
brain does not have that cognitive function. Maybe man does not have the
cognitive function to logically answer the question of how the universe
began, which would assume a God to create everything.
Again I would mention the uncertainty that is so difficult to accept.
Baboons run to the end of the forest when the hunters track them.
The baboons know they are going to be killed. But when they reach
the end of the forest they freeze and wait to be killed as opposed
to going out into the unknown plain where they have never been before.
“Man wants certainty so badly he will believe in a certain nothing (NO GOD)
as opposed to an uncertain something”.

Roseanne I believe you and your experience, but you said that
it was proof for you. It was experiential proof which is personal
but it was not logical proof as you could see by Julia’s challenge.
The male voice on your show had it all explained by physiology and
spinning fighter pilots that saw Jesus, and Julia explained it as an
epileptic fit or seizure. The great Nicholas Tesla said that he
had visions where information came to him, but visions occurred
in altered states that would have been labeled insane. So is it possible
that julia’s epileptic fit and the fighter pilots spinning and Tesla’s
fits with hallucination’s were moments when the filter of the
brain broke down and information from another realm was revealed.

Whatever the explanation about some place in the brain is based
on the belief that neurons firing create consciousness, and that the
brain is like a computer and can be mapped. A great
philosopher Searle exposed the artificial intelligence people
over 30 years ago. He explained machines at least not metal machines
made of inorganic silicon, they will never be conscious. So far he is right
and artificial intelligence has been a big failure. Neuroscientists have
not even found where memory resides. Why because the mind is
not like a computer, and the brain does not have a hard drive.
Right and Left Brain and brain mapping is so misleading as when one becomes
blind when one loses his eyeballs, but if one cuts out the visual cortex
another part of the brain can develop the function. Furthermore
the visual cortex has auditory and sensory cells, etc as as well
as visual cells. It is merely the start of integration of information.
The mind is not a place in the brain, present information seems
to suggest that mind acts through the brain, the brain is merely
a filter not the creator of the brain.
This does not prove the existence of God but it suggests that
we do not understand very much about the mind and its relation
to the brain, contrary to the soothing dogma of media about genius
neurosurgeons and researchers.
“Man wants certainty so badly” he will believe that pseudo-science the
new religion has the answers. A famous line bandied over and over,
“An independent panel of experts said”. What the disconnect between
the mind and brain does suggest though, is something
that has been presented down through the centuries, and that the mind or
soul not only is independent from the brain, but it may transcend death.
That is why Roseanne, do not let anyone challenge your position with
a place in the brain for epileptic fits or spinning fighter pilots etc.
While your position so far cannot be proven scientifically, present
experiments and information from dying people suggests that your
experience is not from the brain but from some other place,
that is eternal, and possibly from a greater consciousness,
(I hesitate to say higher power because I cannot prove it,
but you catch my drift). Believing this does mean you have
to suddenly become a Southern Baptist or whatever. You do not
have to believe in religious dogma to believe there is something
more than death and taxes.

There is a wonderful book, “The Irreducible Mind”, which shows that consciousness
is not generated by the firing of neurons but rather the mind (some may extrapolate
to the soul) exists independently of the brain, and the brain is a filter through
which man sees, hears, feels, smells and touches, etc. The book is 800 pages
of doctors reporting experiences that do not fit the modern paradigm.
As an example a man’s family was waiting outside the operating room while
the man went through a life threatening operation. During the operation,
the man’s heart and brain became inactive and then attempts were made
to bring him back to life. After a half hour or more the man came back to life.
He reported to his family that while he was unconscious he went to the some
realm where he saw his uncle and they spoke. The family reminded him that his
uncle was still alive so it was a dream and not to be taken seriously.
When the family went home they learned the uncle had died before
the operation took place.

Book review quote:
“Current mainstream opinion in psychology, neuroscience, and philosophy of mind holds that all aspects of human mind and consciousness are generated by physical processes occurring in brains. Views of this sort have dominated recent scholarly publication. The present volume, however, demonstrates empirically that this reductive materialism is not only incomplete but false. The authors systematically marshal evidence for a variety of psychological phenomena that are extremely difficult, and in some cases clearly impossible, to account for in conventional physicalist terms. Topics addressed include phenomena of extreme psychophysical influence, memory, psychological automatisms and secondary personality, near-death experiences and allied phenomena, genius-level creativity, and ‘mystical’ states of consciousness both spontaneous and drug-induced. The authors further show that these rogue phenomena are more readily accommodated by an alternative ‘transmission’ or ‘filter’ theory of mind/brain relations advanced over a century ago by a largely forgotten genius, F. W. H. Myers, and developed further by his friend and colleague William James. This theory, moreover, ratifies the commonsense conception of human beings as causally effective conscious agents, and is fully compatible with leading-edge physics and neuroscience. The book should command the attention of all open-minded persons concerned with the still-unsolved mysteries of the mind.”

Could it be that the modern reductions view of life from matter
to mind is all wrong.

Emma Goldman,
” Someone has said that it requires less mental effort to condemn than to think. The widespread mental indolence, so prevalent in society, proves this to be only too true. Rather than to go to the bottom of any given idea, to examine into its origin and meaning, most people will either condemn it altogether, or rely on some superficial or prejudicial definition of non-essentials.”

“Anarchism urges man to think, to investigate, to analyze every proposition; but that the brain capacity of the average reader be not taxed too much, I also shall begin with a definition, and then elaborate on the latter.

ANARCHISM:–The philosophy of a new social order based on
liberty unrestricted by man-made law; the theory that all
forms of government rest on violence, and are therefore wrong
and harmful, as well as unnecessary “